Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Joseph Conrad's character Mr. Kurtz, from "Heart of Darkness," famously mumbles "The horrors...the horrors" as he dies. And so it goes...on and on. Horrors visit countries, individuals, families, and entire peoples all the time. I probably never hear about the horrors most people face daily. And then there is Boston...yesterday.

But, in an attempt to block the horrors...if only for a moment...Derf's comic "The City," from yesterday's Plain Dealer, allowed that moment. He describes the "WOO GIRLS" that appear every Spring. I often have a discussion with my wife about cave people that walk among us in Lakewood, from bar to bar, and bar to car, and bar to home...at hours I should be dreaming. These cave people belch grunts and noises that sometimes approximate a "WOO" and I attempt a translation and I always fail. Thank you Derf for keeping the horrors at bay:

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

My young dreams were often filled with fireballs...a side effect of the duck and cover world we all grew up in. The fear was not irrational...the world was filled with thousands of missiles and warheads. It was reality. It is again. Back thanks to a pudgy faced kid with too many toys. Blustering while his people starve.

Nuclear Dreams 1950-2013

By Michael James Lawless

At night, when young,
We knew the bomb...
I died in dreams so often:
Ending as a flash of white fire.
Decades pass...
I stay alive. I don't Die
In dreams. I won't.
I died again last night...
I felt the bomb, nearby,
A clock set to ring,
In my mind, in my dream,
The trigger clicked, the dream ended.
I died again last night.